112.      Active inter-agency collaboration is increasingly a major feature of the UN system's activities to advance human rights, democracy and good governance. Nonetheless, the system has not yet fully instituted a comprehensive system-wide approach that effectively links all these activities in a mutually reinforcing way and that maximizes its collective capacity to further this key dimension of the Millennium Declaration. The system also confronts the related challenge of effectively integrating its work in these areas with its activities in development and in conflict prevention, at the global and the country levels.

113.      The integration of human rights activities into the UN system's development and peace and security agenda continues to pose major challenges. Further progress in this direction will require not only intensified efforts at joint programming among the secretariats, but also more extensive and effective interactions among the system's intergovernmental bodies. In the short term, the focus should be on:

• mainstreaming human rights into the policies and programmes of UN organizations and promoting wider acceptance of the rights-based approach to development;

• addressing in a more deliberate, forceful way respect for human rights in conflict situations;

• establishing additional means of providing systematic assistance to states in their efforts to implement recommendations of UN human rights bodies at the national level;

• broadening and intensifying support for national human rights protection systems;

• enhancing collective efforts to work with young people to utilize their potential for advocacy and support;

• strengthening human rights training for institutions involved in law enforcement;

• continuing advocacy to encourage ratification of human rights treaties and the removal of reservations to treaties already ratified; and

• improving procedures for supervising implementation of State Party obligations, principally through monitoring by the relevant human rights treaty bodies.

114.      In an environment of intense anti-terrorism measures, promoting the observance of human rights and ensuring that counter-terrorism measures comply with international human rights obligations raise new issues for the work of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and requires new attention by the UN system.

115.      Inadequacies in resources continue to limit the capacity of UN organizations to meet growing support requirements in human rights areas and to hamper efforts to mainstream human rights into the development and peace and security agendas; they need to be addressed across the system.

116.      As in human rights, in the related area of support to democratic processes, the work of the UN system needs to be guided by a more comprehensive system-wide strategy, rooted in the Millennium Declaration, and to be mainstreamed more effectively in the system's overall plans and activities in pursuit of the Declaration's objectives. The universality, legitimacy and impartiality of the UN system gives it a distinct advantage in fostering inclusive democratic processes, which has yet to be fully exploited.

117.      In the area of good governance, the UN system, in partnership with regional and civil society organizations, needs to integrate more purposefully its various activities in building capacities to advance the rule of law. To reinforce the rule of law, the United Nations has developed a "Strategy for an Era of Application of International Law: Action Plan" that provides guidelines for Member States' participation in compliance with the international treaty framework and aims to help States to prepare the necessary implementing legislation. Moving forward, the focus should be on:

• integrating more systematically the rule of law and transitional justice into the strategic and operational planning of peace operations;

• updating and expanding the UN guidelines, manuals and tools on rule of law topics;

• elaborating new and enhanced tools and mechanisms for transitional justice and for justice sector development;

• ensuring that all programmes and policies that support constitutional, judicial and legislative reform also promote gender equality;

• stepping up training on the rule of law and transitional justice; and

• developing further indicators of good governance, grounded in the provisions of the Millennium Declaration.

118.      The Secretary-General, in his report to the 2005 World Summit, highlighted various ways to enhance UN efforts to secure for all peoples the "freedom to live in dignity," through promoting the rule of law, human rights and democracy. The future work of the UN system in these and related areas will be framed by the Summit's outcome.